PDQ's William 'Red' Lewis 'exemplifies entrepreneurship'

William “Red” Lewis, owner of the Automobile Gallery, sits in a 1956 Mercury Montclair in the gallery on Adams Street in Green Bay. Lewis is the recipient of this year's Free Enterprise Award from the Rotary Club of Green Bay.(Photo: Adam Wesley/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)Buy Photo

GREEN BAY - Cars, and washing them, put William “Red” Lewis in the driver’s seat for a life of innovation.

The Green Bay native has steered his way through five decades trying to improve the quality and efficiency of car washes since he first went to work at PDQ Car Wash in 1967. Since taking over PDQ in the early 1970s, Lewis and his family expanded the business into one of the largest car wash companies in the United States, became a father of the touchless car wash, founded a car wash component manufacturing business and a cleaning solution company and created the Automobile Gallery in downtown Green Bay.

Rotary Club of Green Bay President Mary Kay Orr said Lewis’ stewardship of PDQ, his ability to adapt to industry trends and his philanthropy made him a natural selection for the club’s 2017 Free Enterprise Award.

“He exemplifies entrepreneurship,” Orr said. “He took a company and developed it beyond belief. He’s very philanthropic in giving back to the community.”

Lewis said the key to his success has always been to be surrounded by hard-working people.

“It’s about good people. People are everything,” he said.

Lewis said he sensed an opportunity almost immediately when he bought PDQ.

“I thought we could take it to a higher quality,” he said. “We get it better and better and better. We went for quality, cleanliness and efficiency.”

Many car wash businesses sought to develop the elusive “touchless” wash in the early 1980s, but Lewis was able to do it with the help of an engineer from New Zealand he met at a trade show in Chicago.

Allen Jones, the engineer, had the specs for a touchless system, but not Lewis’ business acumen. They agreed to work together to bring the idea to market.

“I was the car wash guy, Allen was the engineer and Charlie Lieb did the business side,” Lewis said.

Along the way, they patented several key pieces of equipment that make the process work and founded a manufacturing company to produce them.

“Others were trying, but Red hit it harder and faster than any others,” said Becky Lewis-Verheyden, Lewis' daughter and the president of R. Lewis Technologies. “Anybody in the industry will tell you Red’s one of the originators of the touchless car wash.”

The family sold the manufacturing business to Dover Inc. in the late 1990s and turned their attention to a key quandary in the business: Why dirt sticks to cars. The research and work on cleaning solutions became the basis for R. Lewis Technologies’ business.

“We’re still working on that,” Lewis-Verheyden said. “We have a pretty good idea why, but it’s our little trade secret that allows us to do business.”

The Free Enterprise Award comes with a $5,000 donation to the recipient’s charity of choice. Orr said Lewis donated it to the Rotary Foundation of Green Bay for scholarships to a high school student leadership retreat that the club organizes.

“I know how to wash cars. Rotary knows how to support young people,” Lewis said.